Comment by elktown
2 days ago
No, it's embarrassing being obsessed with good tone to the point that people behaving badly should never be called out for it.
The article provides good background into how it got to this point - and it fits well with doing an opportunistic AI rewrite after being acquired by an AI provider.
It is not about good tone it's about not being hateful and rude. Why is this that hard to pick apart?
Why do devs believe being rude is somehow a sign of honesty? They are orthogonal. This post needed none of the mean-spirited attacks that it contained to make its points. It is only hurt by the attacks as seen by the focus on "tone" throughout these comments.
It's all about tone. The original bad behavior is done without overt "bad tone" but if the response to it is spicy then the former is ignored and the latter is condemned despite being of lesser severity.
I can buy that it can be good corporate politics to not upset the superficial crowd that will immediately lash out on tone, but I will not judge someone rightfully reacting on bad behavior that they've been on the receiving end of.
Also, I didn't say being rude is a sign of honesty, that's you extrapolating.
You can call it superficiality but there are just some of us who believe that treating people right is the core of this. You're viewing that as some kind of superficial virtue signaling but if we're not treating people with respect then there's not a point in doing any of this, it gets to the very thing that Kelley is complaining about.
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What you are asking for is a slippery slope.
The history of humanity is full of biting polemics and attacks on the character of others, just read Voltaire. Sometimes, attacks are deserved.
Yes, a world in which everyone is professional and "plays nice" sounds great but it also quickly becomes a mechanism for suppression of the truth. Not the situation here, but "decorum" expectations are sometimes precisely one of the functions that help bad people maintain power (consider how difficult it can be for minorities or marginalized people to speak truthfully about what's happened to them). Sometimes one person being blunt, honest, and a little rude is a necessary step in clearing ground for others to be more upfront about the bad behavior of individuals.
The argument isn't to avoid calling out "bad" behaviour, it's that you can do so with a professional (or at least not actively childish) tone. Using phrases like "stinky manager" while taking multiple jabs at Jarred's personal and educational background (implying by not going to university he was too stupid to think critically about his path forward) paints a weirdly childish yet elitist viewpoint. The blog post reads as vindictive, akin to something along the lines of "screw you kid, glad to be rid of you, and thanks for the $120,000 btw."
I don't interact with Zig or Bun, but I certainly haven't been enticed to try Zig after this.
I'm sorry but I honestly think this is just being superficial wanting to push it through some kind of corporate speak filter to be able to stomach it.
> Using phrases like "stinky manager"
I would've used a worse adjective given the WLB tweet etc. Is it just because stinky itself has a childish tone to it rather than something like shitty? Or do one need to reach to somewhat open-ended terms like "questionable" to be palatable?
> implying by not going to university he was too stupid to think critically about his path forward
I read that as emphasizing the Thiel Fellowship part, not the lack of university education.
> I don't interact with Zig or Bun, but I certainly haven't been enticed to try Zig after this.
I'm so tired of "I've never played [game] & have never had any intention to play [game] whatsoever, but given [newfound-grievance] I wont buy it!"-style dismissals - talking about childishness.
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